Saving Spirits
by HaloFin17
Summary: But who's saving who? A sequel to "Hunting Spirits" that also offers an AU ending to the Battle at Badon Hill. Once again, a Tristan fic with heavy influence from the works of Tolkien. Rating for violence. Enjoy!


**Summary: **But who's saving who? A sequel to "Hunting Spirits" that also offers an AU ending to the Battle at Badon Hill. Once again, a Tristan fic with heavy influence from the works of Tolkien. Enjoy!

**Disclaimer: **Still true, I'm afraid – no ownership and no profit on my part.

**Author's Note:** Once again, I cannot possibly post this fic without giving credit where credit is due: to **Mandamirra10 **for helping me immensely with this story and for being the first to read over it. This little sequel would never have happened without you, hon, so thank you millions, and I hope you all enjoy!

**Saving Spirits **

Bloodlust.

That was what some people called it – people like Galahad. Tristan, however, preferred to think of it merely as efficiency. After all, could not the taking of life be as true an art form as any of the fine things practiced in Arthur's beloved Rome? Indeed it could, at least in the scout's keen mind, and he was irrefutably a master in that field.

Saxons fell like wheat during harvest as the Sarmatian's curved sword scythed through their ranks with slow, deliberate strokes. But one foe in particular stood out to him – a huge, burly Saxon who was undoubtedly the captain of his savage host. Tristan steered his horse closer to where the brute was simultaneously cutting down two of Arthur's new Woad allies.

He dismounted. The Saxon marked his coming, and the contest began long before the combatants could come within arm's reach. A handful of lesser Saxons advanced against him, but they were no match for such an elite Sarmatian warrior. Tristan cut them down easily, his eyes scarcely leaving the Saxon commander all the gory while.

As he drew nearer to his enemy, the scout reached up to cast aside his helmet with a dramatic flourish. That, in and of itself, was a taunt, a mockery of the other's skill. As he raised his blade in challenge, only Tristan's resolute, unflinching gaze spoke of his deadly intent. No words were necessary. Even the other, more common soldiers understood and moved away, wisely taking their own conflicts elsewhere.

The first round of blows between them yielded little more than a mutual understanding that the two opponents were quite evenly matched, regardless of the differences in their preferred fighting styles. Tristan felt his heart surge with the realization. Already this was looking to be one of the most challenging single-combat battles he had ever encountered, and its resolution, one way or another, should be nothing less than thrilling.

They came back together then, each clash of their swords a dissonant chorus that shook Tristan's arm clear up past his shoulder. The Saxon was larger and stronger than him, there was no arguing that; but the Sarmatian knight's confidence in his own speed and hard-earned skill never wavered. He could win! He had overcome worse odds than this before.

With a low feint to the right, Tristan abruptly swung his sword up and around to deliver a high blow meant to sever the Saxon's miserable head from his shoulders; but the brute was not fooled and promptly blocked the sword in mid-swipe with his own bulky weapon.

And then, before he could even think, Tristan felt the pain.

It stretched and reached, crawling like a thousand ravenous fire across his stomach and up under his right arm. In the blink of an eye, he disengaged himself from the struggle and stood back apart from his opponent, with his left hand unconsciously applying pressure to the high end of the wound. Already he could feel the blood. It was as fierce a battle as any not to let the shock, let alone the pain, ripple in waves across his face.

_How in all of Britain had that happened? How had he _let _it happen?_

The answer was already there, in plain sight before his eyes, though he had failed to notice it before. He had not been meant to notice it. A dagger – slick in the Saxon's hand and gorged on a feast of fresh, hot blood. _His_ blood, Tristan knew at once. Apparently, this Saxon did not share the same thirst to prove himself that all honorable warriors possessed. But the chieftain wore no regret about his underhanded tactics; he simply looked smug.

Alight with a fit of sudden rage, Tristan threw himself back into the fray. He managed to control his body well, all things considered, for discipline of the flesh was nothing new to a scout. Nevertheless, he was wounded, and in absolutely no condition to ward off attacks from two weapons at once. Were he faced only with a sword, even then he might still have held his own and won the day; but the dagger – that cursed dagger! – would surely be his undoing.

This time it was a stab wound, rather than a slice, that caught him squarely in the web of muscles where shoulder and neck wove together. The pain roared in his ears, far worse than before. Tristan jerked backward as he fell, distantly hoping that the movement might wrench the hateful dagger free of its owner's malevolent grasp; but no such luck. The Saxon simply watched in deceptively passive amusement as Tristan pitifully crawled away to buy himself a few precious seconds of time. It could have ended there, and part of him almost hoped it would.

But the rest of him, that part which had always kept him going through so many winter nights alone out in the wilderness, detested nothing more than the word "surrender." Banishing all thought of pain from his mind, Tristan forced his weary, bloodied body upright. The Saxon's eyebrows rose, obviously in surprise; he must not have expected this much resilience from one lonely Sarmatian.

The combat resumed, but only briefly. For the knight was weak, his feeble strength fading fast, and the almost desperate recklessness of his fighting reflected the fact. The crimson dagger came down again, finding a resting place in his sword arm. Tristan gasped sharply, staggering backward again, and the sword fell from his stunned grip.

A couple of heartbeats passed, and the scout waited, watching the Saxon apart from him with grave apprehension. Would it end now? He could not possibly keep this up much longer; he was losing so much blood! But the Saxon casually kicked the sword back over, toying with him.

_Why not?_ he reasoned dimly. Why not die by a Saxon hand after all, as he'd unwittingly predicted days before? This would be his last stand, then.

Tristan gingerly bent down despite the pain, groping for his sword even as his vision threatened to darken ominously; but the way to his weapon was suddenly obstructed when a pair of feet came into view – simply shod feet that left no imprint in the ground behind them. Tristan's heart skipped a beat, his mind and memories a blur. It couldn't be! And yet, there he was.

The hooded stranger from the coast – this time an unexpectedly welcome sight – reached out to pick up the discarded sword himself. He rotated the weapon slowly, by all appearances curiously studying the curvature of the blade and paying no heed whatsoever to the Saxon commander who eyed his new prey with growing hunger.

But the tall figure had yet to look up from the weapon in his hand. It was as though he had never held such a thing before, and Tristan was forced to hope that the morbid fascination was nothing more than a ruse. Could this being defend himself? The knight had wondered about that – wondered about it many times. And now, here in the most bizarre of circumstances, he would soon find out.

At last, Tristan let himself sink to the cold ground in exhaustion and pain, resigned now to let his destiny be decided by another. He hated to feel so powerless, but what else was to be done? One way or another, he would share in the stranger's fate. So why did the idea of his rescuer perishing trouble him so much more than the thought of his own untimely demise?

He needn't have worried. All at once, just as the Saxon giant suddenly lunged forward to attack, the stranger's balance shifted, and the sword came up in a foreign yet unmistakable stance of readiness and defense. The fight was on.

It did not last long, and for that very reason, Tristan would never forget it. The stranger was taller than the Saxon, although much slighter in build, as Tristan had been; yet he moved with such fluidity and grace that his opponent looked like little more than an awkward, bumbling fool. And he handled the blade with such ridiculous ease that could only have come with years upon years of dedicated practice.

Again the Saxon tried to strike out with his dagger, but the stranger was too quick. After the exchange of only a few blows, he cut off the Saxon's sword hand, his right, and then promptly ran him through the stomach up to the hilt of the sword. Blood bubbled up into the chieftain's mouth, drowning out his cries of agony and rage, and the monster of a man finally crumpled at Death's feet.

A look of poorly-masked horror flitted across the stranger's face when he looked down and glimpsed his reddened hands, a fact which puzzled the observant scout exceedingly. For surely this being had not become such a lethal fighter without having shed much blood in his own time; whenever that might have been. He stooped to cleanse his hands, as well as the blade, of Saxon gore, and finally then did Tristan realize. It was not new fascination for the weapon that he had read in the stranger's starlit eyes, but rather a bittersweet nostalgia – as though wielding a sword again, perhaps for the first time in a very long while, had brought with it a host of memories long buried. Some far less welcome than others.

The stranger's hood had been upset from his head during the flurry of battle, and the fabric now fell draped about his shoulders. Tristan eagerly took advantage of this opportunity to examine his mysterious savior in a new light, and the most remarkable discovery, by far, were the ears. Instead of being rounded at the top, they came to a fine point. So this being was no human after all, but neither did he match the description of any deity with whom Tristan was familiar. Besides, his presence was too heavy – too marred and too fallen – to be that of a god.

"This is a fine weapon. I can remember many others quite like it."

_And how far back do those memories reach?_ Tristan's voice failed to give life to the question, almost as though he were afraid of what the answer might be. Perhaps some things truly were better left unknown.

The stranger laid the sword down by its rightful owner, then knelt himself beside Tristan to gauge the severity of the knight's wounds.

"I am no healer," he announced gravely, yet his fair hands moved over the scarlet gashes with a gentle attentiveness that could only be attributed to much prior experience.

And then he began to sing, so softly that only Tristan himself could hear. The scout couldn't decide if the sound reminded him more of a mystic's chant or of a mother's lullaby, but the language itself was certainly one he'd never heard before. It simultaneously soothed and haunted, stirring up a peculiar paradox in his weary brain. He felt the tides of pain ebb somewhat, and the dizzy ringing in his head slowly cleared.

"You will live," his caregiver spoke again, "though your injuries will require much time and care to fully heal."

Tristan grimaced as he struggled to draw a deep breath. "Why did you help me?" he managed at last. "And how did you know about this battle?" 

The stranger shrugged. "I know of most such things that occur, although rarely do I interfere with them. It would have grieved me to watch you die, though die you must ere long; but at least a warrior of your skill deserves to die in a more honorable fight."

"Then I thank you; but that's not the real reason."

The eyes appraised him critically, perhaps even caught off guard by the scout's perception. "Nay. Indeed, it was not. I think you have more yet to live for than you realize."

Tristan snorted, the expression weak and bitter. "Such as? You yourself even said I would have nothing left but killing once the Romans were gone."

"Only if you choose it. Believe me, young man, if there is but one person in all this wide world who will stand by you and accept you – yea, even love you – in spite of all the past wrongs you may have wrought…_that _is reason enough to live. You have five such friends on this very battlefield, dear as any brother, who need you as much as you have ever needed them. And perhaps one more, even, that I had not yet counted."

The stranger's gaze lifted skyward, and from far above a distinct, clear cry was heard; Tristan did not even need to look to identify the source of the sound as his beloved hawk. A creature faithful beyond measure, the bird was still here keeping vigil over him, even after its own well-deserved freedom had been granted. He might have smiled, had his companion not continued in a subdued tone.

"If you are selfish enough to abandon those friends now, it will devastate them more than you could ever know."

Tristan looked up sharply at that, and suddenly he saw his savior in an entirely new light. Those words carried too much weight for a casual observation; and so this question, as difficult as any other he had yet considered, _would _be asked.

"Who has abandoned you?"

No sooner had he finished speaking, but a shadow fell, darkening the brilliance of the other's countenance as an eclipse the sun. "Who hasn't?" He rose to leave.

"Wait!" Tristan reached out to grab the stranger's arm, but stopped before the contact could be made. His companion had already been stayed by his exclamation. "Stay with us; you would be more than welcome at the Wall. I don't know why you choose to wander in lonely exile, but you do not need to now."

The stranger's expression appeared suddenly pained by those words, but the gentle sadness that he wore so naturally soon returned. "But I'm afraid I must – especially in these times. Why should I make friends I cannot keep?"

Tristan held back an impatient sigh. Did this stranger always have to be such an enigma, incapable of giving a straight answer?

"Who are you?" He did not really expect an answer, but the scout's failure to voice that query five years ago still haunted him in moments of both sleep and wakefulness. As did the unearthly harmony of the stranger's song.

"I am one who was forgotten long ago, and is happy to remain as such."

The reply had come after a brief pause, yet its utterance took Tristan pleasantly by surprise. The elusive nature of it, of course, was to be expected by now.

"Here they come. Your friends will tend you."

_Friends? What friends? Arthur?_ Tristan had not given his commander a single thought since the unlooked-for reappearance of the stranger, but now he gingerly craned his neck to follow the impossibly bright gaze of the being who knelt beside him. Sure enough, there was Arthur himself coming toward them, along with a limping Lancelot and a bloody yet whole Guinevere. The Roman must have gone to their aid, once he saw that the Saxon chieftain was being dealt with handily; even if he did not know, and never would know, who was to thank for that great favor.

"Arthur will be glad to finally meet you, after everything I told him about last time." Tristan forced a brittle smile through his swelling pain and turned his head back around to face his companion. The smile faded.

For the stranger was gone, having easily disappeared amid the smoke and chaos of a dying battle. Arthur and the others knights were all there now, fussing like worried mothers over his and Lancelot's wounds; Tristan barely noticed them. Already they were shooting questions at him in quick succession, but once again, the weakened scout had no answers to give. This time, it only made him sad.

For Tristan knew with an inexplicably heavy heart that he would never again look upon that face – upon those eyes – or hear that voice which shamed all mortal melodies. But he would remember them. He would remember them every time he glimpsed the stars through the veil of Britain's clouds, and every time he heard the familiar rolling rhythm of the Sea.

~ The End


End file.
